How to maintain your greens

Thursday

Warm your garden with exuberant colors: gold, yellow and bronze chrysanthemums, black-eyed Susans, snapdragons, asters, bright-faced pansies, bicolored marigolds. Set them off with the icy blue-green of dusty miller. Add dramatic darker tones with ornamental kale and cabbage, which cheerfully welcome chillier temperatures, or artemisia and dracaena, both grown for their dramatic foliage.

LARGER PALETTE

Fall is the time to prune and shape small trees and bushes, and to add new residents to your yard. For fiery color, think of maple trees, which change to brilliant crimson, yellow or orange each autumn. Or choose the golden-yellow foliage of the quaking aspen, which has become almost iconic in the West. Birches, whose leaves also glow yellow, have white or yellow bark that adds yet another interesting visual element to your landscape.

NEW SEASON, NEW LOOK

Maybe it’s time for more than simple splashes of color. Redesign your yard, or perhaps just part of it. If you’re feeling adventurous, gather graph paper and Crayolas and start sketching. You’ll need to remember which plants get along best in your hardiness zone, and the shape and height of each new player in your lineup. You’ll be getting help from your local nursery, but a fairly detailed hardiness zone map is available from the United States National Arboretum at www.usna.usda.gov.

If you run into designer’s block, you might decide instead to shop online for a ready-made plan and an array of appropriate plants. Here are a couple of starting points: www.LandscapingIdeas.Online.com and www.Great-Landscaping-Ideas.com.

GOING MOBILE

Putting a garden on wheels means you can fool Mother Nature, well, a little bit. A luxurious hibiscus, a graceful palm, even a tall cactus can live quite happily in a large container on casters, for instance. Assemble a few in different sizes. For warm autumn days, move your containers onto the patio or balcony, where they can double as planters. Let them spend cold months inside, next to a sunny window.

PREPARING FOR WINTER

Paying attention to fall chores will bring big dividends next spring.

Now’s the time to select and plant tulip, daffodil and hyacinth bulbs.

It’s also the season for mulching with either commercial mixes or less expensive grass cuttings and leaves raked from your own yard. Landscape designer David Beaulieu (www.landscaping.about.com) mentions these and other autumn projects and, wisely, reminds gardeners of this simple but all too easily forgotten job: Drain and store hoses to prevent freezing and rupturing.

Compiled From Online Sites.

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